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Intimate 'This Wide Night' is about second chances

Miranda McGee, left, and Dale Hodges star in the Clifton Players’ production of Chloë Moss’ “This Wide Night.” Directed by Kevin Crowley, the play is an intense and occasionally heartbreaking story of two women who have recently left prison and are trying to make their way in the world outside.(Photo: Provided/Kristen Ruthemeyer Hammer)

It’s taken more than three years to bring “This Wide Night” to the Clifton Performance Theatre stage.

It’s not that the show was so huge. There are only two characters. And the set is minimal. But when you’re dealing with actors who are among the most admired and in-demand in Greater Cincinnati, it’s just hard to make schedules mesh.

A few years back, four veterans of the local stage – Dale Hodges, Miranda McGee, Cathy Springfield and Kevin Crowley – got together to read through the play. Hodges had read a review of a New York production and thought it sounded intriguing. So she tracked down a copy of Chloë Moss’ script and assembled this small handful of friends to see what the script actually sounded like.

Reading a script out loud and sharing the dialogue with others is very different from reading it to yourself. When you have characters sitting face to face, the interplay among them takes on a dramatic impact that’s nearly impossible to conjure up in your head.

But after the first reading, Crowley was so-so about the script.

“I thought the beginning of the play was slow-moving,” recalls Crowley, director of the CPT production. “Not a lot happens.” He thinks again. He doesn’t want to sound negative about the play. After all, he knows the script much better now than he did at that initial reading. And more than a month of rehearsals with two gifted actors has revealed much about the script that he didn’t grasp three years ago. “But, you know, in the hands of good actors, it’s the kind of play where a lot can happen. Does that make sense?”

It does, actually.

Some plays are relatively easy to stage. It’s best if they’re not too deep and have lots and lots of things happening on the stage. Pulling off a decent production of a show like that is a little like following a road map or a well-written recipe. Do what the script tells you and you’ll probably be in decent shape.

But “This Wide Night” is not one of those plays.

Miranda McGee, left, and Dale Hodges star in the Clifton Players’ production of Chloë Moss’ “This Wide Night.” Directed by Kevin Crowley, the play is an intense and occasionally heartbreaking story of two women who have recently left prison and are trying to make their way in the world outside.(Photo: Provided/Kristen Ruthemeyer Hammer)

It’s about two women, former prison cellmates, who are trying to find their way in a world from which they have been removed for years. They don’t have family to support them. They don’t have networks of friends waiting to provide connections and to shepherd them through the complexities of everyday life.

All they have is one another. And even that is different. Relationships are different behind bars than they are on the outside.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says McGee. “You listen to these women and start to understand their lives and you think, 'How do they possibly have a chance of succeeding?' ”

It’s not all without hope, though, she says. It’s just that life seems stacked against them.

“I mean, my character started off life without a chance,” says McGee. “How is she even supposed to know how to make the world work for her?”

Clifton Performance Theatre is the perfect sort of space for a show like this, though. It’s tiny – 50 people constitutes a jam-packed house. And because the audience is so incredibly close to the actors, every subtlety, every dramatic nuance is evident. It’s the sort of setting that has great potential. But for actors, it’s enormously challenging.

“I’m very grateful to have a space like this available for a project of this sort,” says Hodges. “But performing in an intimate space takes great focus. You can’t relax for a second. You shouldn’t ever do that, really. But in a space this small, you can’t. The audience sees everything.”

For that audience, of course, that’s the joy of a tiny performing space. You can feel like you’re in a scene with the actors rather than simply observing them. It’s exhilarating. And at times, harrowing. Or, insists Crowley, funny.

“I know this play much better than I did the first time we read it,” he says. “And there are some very funny parts. I wouldn’t do it if there weren’t. It is heartbreaking. But it’s also got a great uplifting message. This play is about second chances. I think that resonates with everyone. Is there anyone out there who hasn’t needed a second chance at some point in their lives?”